


All These Things that I've Done

by superfluouskeys



Series: Soulmate AUs A-Z [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Soulmate AU, surprisingly fluffy?, the one where only your soulmate can kill you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-09-16 14:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9276134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Soulmate AU Prompt Response: the one where only your soulmate can kill you.Kara had always taken a strange sort of comfort in the knowledge that her soulmate must have been destroyed along with her home planet.  She might be nearly invincible, but she didn't relish the thought of accidentally killing anyone else.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MikoNeko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikoNeko/gifts).



  1. _the one where only your soulmate can kill you._



People were positively stupid when they thought they couldn't die.

Kara had been warned about the people on Earth, of course, though she hadn't realized at the time that it would be her problem on such a large and immediate scale.  At least half the people she met, if they believed in the Soulmate Rule even a little, came to believe that it exempted them from all other causes of death.

No amount of chaos would convince them otherwise.

Still, there was a strange sort of comfort in it for herself.  While Kara might be nearly invincible, she did not relish the thought of accidentally killing anyone.  With Krypton long-destroyed, she'd always assumed her soulmate had been destroyed along with it, and been more or less content in that knowledge.  One didn't need a true soulmate to be happy, after all, and how was anyone even supposed to know unless something terrible happened?  She'd just have to find one of those people who felt the same way: who didn't believe, or who didn't care.

Kara felt that way, that is to say, until something terrible happened.

She was not herself at the time, and yet she was.  In some ways, she was more herself than ever, or too much herself to handle.  All her worst thoughts, her darkest, cruelest secrets, had somehow come bubbling up to the surface that day, and there was no stopping them, and worse, there was no desire to stop them.

Cat had called on her--had already gotten wind of the rumour of Supergirl's strange behaviour, and Kara had made some terrifying speech she barely remembered about victimhood and true power, and she had thrown Cat off of her balcony.  The memory of it still didn't feel real to her, still knocked the breath from her body even to picture it.

And the worst part?  The worst part was that for a split second, Kara had _wanted_ to kill her.  She had wanted to be able to kill her.  She had bemoaned the fact that since she physically threw cat off the building, that amorphous thing commonly called the Soulmate Rule applied.  Cat wouldn't die.  And at the time, mind addled by some kind of synthetic, messed up kryptonite, Kara had found that reality disgusting.

Cat shouldn't have been able to die.

It wasn't even the first thing that had registered in her consciousness when she'd come to, weeping uncontrollably, blubbering apologies that would never, ever make up for the terror she had wrought.  She'd been overwhelmed by so many atrocities at once that this one had, almost blissfully, escaped her notice for a moment or two.

Then, suddenly, she felt as though all the air had been sucked out of the room.  "Cat."

"She's..." Alex was going to say she was fine--Kara could hear her wanting to say it in the hitch in her voice--but she couldn't do it.  Cat wasn't fine.

As soon as Kara was in any condition to leave the DEO (far more a mental issue than a physical one, for Kara could barely stop crying), she'd found the hospital where Cat had just barely been stabilized.  Though the hospital staff were reluctant to let anyone see her, she had apparently been half-consciously demanding that her assistant see her at once.

It was all Kara could do not to break down in tears yet again.

"Miss Grant..."

'Kiera, finally."  Cat's words were somewhat slurred, but she was gesticulating vaguely to a stack of papers by her bed.  "I've made a list of things you'll need to take care of while I'm being held prisoner."

"Held prisoner?  You almost died!"

Cat waved her hand dismissively and indicated the papers again.  Then Kara noticed something she never had before.  Cat's wrist was usually obscured by bracelets, or else moving too quickly to examine closely, but now Kara could clearly see Cat's soul mark--would recognize it anywhere, since it matched her own.

Kara stammered out a few useless syllables, unable to process what she'd seen and also the immediate conundrum presented to her.  Her first thought when she'd realized Cat might not be okay was that maybe the soul marks didn't mean anything, after all--maybe it was just an old superstition backed by nothing more than idle supposition and the strength of mass belief in something that was nearly impossible and definitely unethical to prove.

Cat?  Cat was...impossible, and mean and petty and overbearing and brilliant and beautiful and inspirational, and...and Kara couldn't even tell her, because then Cat might guess, and Cat wasn't allowed to know that Kara and Supergirl were one and the same.

The result of this convoluted musing was a surprised smile breaking across Kara's features--an expression that almost hurt after she'd spent the past several hours crying.  And by the sun, this was not even the beginning of the mess she had wrought when she'd been apart from herself, but all the same, Kara could not help but feel...new.

"Kiera.  Kiera."

"S-sorry.  Sorry, Miss Grant.  I'll...I'll get right on it.  Of course."

"Have you suffered a blow to the head?" Cat wondered coolly.  "Were you also just lobbed off a building?"

"No, no, I'm..."  Try though she might, and though she doubted she'd feel very much like smiling in the days or weeks or months to come, in this moment, Kara could not quite dismiss her smile entirely.  "I'm just glad you're alive, Miss Grant," she said, sincerely.  And of course Cat had no way of knowing--could not be allowed to know--the full extent of the meaning of Kara's words.

Cat's reaction was almost imperceptible.  Just a slight widening of the eyes, a slight purse of the lips.  Surprise, followed by something new and warm, followed by...something wholly expected.  "Of course I'm alive, Kiera," Cat said, words clipped, but with no bite.  "Now, chop chop."  She waved her hand to indicate that Kara was dismissed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A birthday gift for [MikoNeko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikoNeko/pseuds/MikoNeko), who requested more SuperCat and/or a follow up to this piece! I'm very happy with this installment, so I hope you will enjoy it, too!

People were positively stupid when they thought they couldn't die.

Cat Grant had never put very much faith in divine forces of the universe--indeed, she had never put very much faith into anyone or anything aside from herself.  Her mother had taught her that lesson well without even trying.

And that healthy skepticism, that utter devotion to cold, calculated effort over luck or serendipity, had served Cat very well over the years.  She had built her own empire from nothing.  Had raised her son into a fine young man, albeit a little lonely, a little faithless himself.

In fact, the only reason Cat wished there were anything she could put her faith in was for her son's sake.  It was all fine and well for her to be cynical, but she'd have liked it if her child were able to believe in something, just for a little while, before the world steadfastly crushed his dreams under its proverbial boot.

Then Supergirl had come.

She'd staggered into existence, seemingly out of thin air, and though Cat would never have admitted it to a single soul, this monumental occurrence had torn her world asunder.  For once in her life, Cat Grant saw before her eyes a stroke of dumb luck--the mundane forces of chaos and causality had somehow combined, and thrown a fortuity squarely into Cat's court.

Cat's private devotion to Supergirl ran far deeper than just the good fortune it brought her company to become the champion of its own personal superhero.  In the stunning beauty, in the fumbled attempts at becoming a city's go-to saviour, Cat saw something inexplicably familiar.  Sometimes, when she was particularly tired, particularly lonely, or perhaps just a little tipsy, she thought that looking at Supergirl was like seeing her own soul.

Wondered, hazily, whether aliens had soulmates.

Not that she even believed in that garbage.  Sentimental nonsense.  Something to keep plebian minds too preoccupied to notice that love was a sham, a harmful, yet bizarrely ubiquitous lie that made fools think themselves invincible.

In her saner moments, she reminded herself that the strange familiarity was only Supergirl's passing, superficial resemblance to her assistant.  Something about the eyes, the nose, the colour of the hair.  Nothing more.  And if perhaps her heart sang in response to every new feat of bravery on which she had the pleasure of reporting, well, it was only because Carter was so taken with her.  Carter, who had always been so withdrawn, came alight whenever he heard anything about Supergirl.  And so Cat came alight, too.  Simple.  Chaos and causality.  Nothing more.

Cat put her faith in this explanation until something unfortunate occurred, and her world was shattered once more.

Supergirl went insane.  It was a simple enough thing to grasp on the surface, but in practice, it was terrifying, bone-chilling in a way no one could fully quantify.  Beacon of hope though she was, she remained an alien with incomprehensible powers.  Many people were afraid of her, and this would have been good enough reason in and of itself.  They were afraid something might go wrong.

It wasn't the words that hurt, not really.  Cat had spent most of her life fielding painful verbal barbs.  She imagined they had all settled themselves somewhere deep in her psyche where they'd someday congeal and form an ulcer, but that was a problem for a later day.

It was like watching her soul come undone before her.  She wasn't drunk, she wasn't any more tired than usual, but she could not shake the thought from her mind.  _Seeing my soul, seeing my soul, seeing my soul_.

Cat Grant liked to pretend that she wasn't afraid of anything.  But in truth she was terrified of dying.  And falling from the topmost floor of her building was a uniquely horrible way to go.

According to her doctors, Cat had very briefly taken her leave of this world, but had been revived just in time to be severely injured, rather than permanently, irreparably damaged.  She'd broken several bones, but that was, miraculously, the worst of it.  Wondered groggily how this would play into the universal bullshit conversation on the elusive Soulmate Rule.

By the time her assistant came skittering in, she'd already cleared her mind enough to return it to what needed to be done whilst she was bedridden.  Kara Danvers was an absolute disaster--Cat marveled that she'd ever for an instant put any stock into a cosmetic resemblance with Supergirl.  Kara seemed to be on the verge of a meltdown, herself, all tears and smiles and strange phrases, but on the other hand it was...not entirely unwelcome to feel as though someone other than her son might have cared if she'd died.

The interaction had made absolutely no sense to her until a very long time later, when she had more or less fully recovered from her near-death experience, and when the course of her life had altered in ways she'd scarcely have been able to imagine a few months prior.  She'd left Catco for a time--maybe forever, though she doubted it--to free herself up to pursue other things.  Mostly reading, writing, going for long walks, spending time with her son before his teen years inevitably rendered him weary of her presence.

But sometimes, bizarrely, her new life of freedom consisted of being invited on little outings with her former assistant-turned-reporter for a man more insufferable than herself.

"So, how is Snapper treating you," she began over her cocktail, but it wasn't really a question so much as an ouverture for Kara to launch into an inevitable rant.

Rant she did, replete with dramatic gesticulations.  Cat couldn't help that her eyes were drawn to Kara's hands, couldn't help that she had such a keen eye for detail, couldn't help the horrible stuttering in her heart when she noticed a birthmark everyone who didn't live under a rock had been trained from the cradle to recognize anywhere.

Cat Grant was a dedicated consumer of mass media.  Try though she might to remain a skeptic, never to put too much faith into anyone or anything, how could she have helped but to notice that that amorphous thing commonly called a soul mark on Kara's wrist was the very same one that Cat bore on her own?

Kara finished her rant on Snapper's many flaws, and Cat muttered some response about it being good for Kara to work for difficult people.  Cat knew personally that she could handle it, and perhaps it was a personal bias from her own life that told her that working for difficult people made one a stronger person in one's own right in the end.

Kara asked about Carter, and Cat told her he'd been practically obsessed with the recent Cadmus-Luthor debacle, which set Kara alight with some various strange nervous habits.  Kara asserted that Lena was innocent, that she'd done her damndest to prove it before it was too late, and and Cat took this next rant to contemplate the curious happenstance that her beautiful disaster of an assistant could bear the selfsame soul mark.

Thought of the way she'd seen her own soul in Supergirl, thought of how they really did look surprisingly alike sometimes, in certain lights.

Like now, for example.  Now Kara was alight, impassioned, talking about something she believed in, and it gave her a strength and confidence she didn't usually carry in her daily life.  And in this moment, in the dim light of the little bar, Cat could see how she could confuse Kara with Supergirl, could see how _seeing her soul_ might accidentally be associated in her mind with one and not the other.  It all made perfect sense.  Simple.  Chaos and causality.

Half-consciously, Cat moved a bit closer.  Asked whether Kara made time for romantic endeavours amid her new life as a reporter and positive press for a member of the infamous Luthor family.  Watched Kara's brow knit, eyes search for something to focus their attention on, hands fidget with the fabric of her skirt.

"Not...really," she said, at last.  "There've been a few...people, I guess.  But..." she shrugged, attempted lightheartedness, but sounded strangely sad.  "It just hasn't felt right yet, you know?"

_Seeing my soul_.

"I do know."

She was a bit drunk, probably.  The alcohol was getting to her head.  It was late--the time had flown by--and though she didn't strictly need to get home, she did need to get away from this troubling train of thought.  Was feeling strange, changeable, impulsive, reactionary.  Couldn't seem to stop glancing at Kara's wrist.

The bar wasn't far from where Kara lived, and Cat had called a cab.  They stood outside under a streetlamp, each somewhat awkward, neither entirely sure how to continue the conversation.

Finally, Kara spoke, hesitantly, not quite meeting Cat's eyes.  "What about you, Miss Grant?"

"Me?"

"Yeah, you know," Kara shrugged again.  "Does your sabbatical leave you any time for someone special in your life?"

"I've never put very much faith in other people," said Cat quietly.  "Aside from you.  Occasionally.  Rarely."

But Kara beamed nonetheless, and for some reason the sight was utterly unnerving.  Kara was a smiley sort of person, no matter the circumstance, so much that a smile on her face rarely meant anything good was happening.  But this was different.  This felt personal.  It reminded her...and for this memory she had to reach through a lot of pain medication...of the way Kara had looked at her in the hospital, when she'd said she was glad Cat was alive.

Cat contemplated Kara in the dim light from the streetlamp for a moment, frowning, studious.  She was feeling reckless--irritable, almost, as she often felt when the simple, causal explanations she set for herself did not measure up to the anomalies the world presented her.

Felt a kind of determination settle in her stomach.  Grabbed Kara by the arms and leaned in to kiss her.

Surprised, practically thrown off-balance, when Kara kissed her back with little hesitation.

_Seeing my soul_.

Fell just a little bit in love with the look on Kara's face when she pulled away.  The kind of happiness one shows when one hadn't expected--something deeper than that, even.  The kind of happiness that came from feeling as though the cause of joy couldn't have possibly befallen them in this universe.  The kind of happiness that came from the peculiar feeling that something just a bit beyond mere chaos and causality might be at work.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief, and probably final follow-up to this piece as requested for my 7 Days of Fic for 777 Followers!

The sound of heavy rain woke her.  She'd fallen asleep so suddenly and so soundly that her position had left a crick in her neck and a dire need to stretch her legs, but Cat did not move just yet.  First she breathed deep, flexed her fingers around the curve of Kara's waist, savoured the warmth of Kara's skin against her cheek, memorized the smell of something fresh and clean and faintly citric.

Lightning illuminated them both, and Cat at last conceded to the protestations of her body.  She turned over, stretched, massaged her shoulder where she'd slept on it, and positioned her head so that she might contemplate Kara, sprawled out on her back and still dead asleep, utterly undisturbed by the sudden, violent downpour.

Her mind strayed to markings.  It had been the dearth thereof that had truly given her away in the end, beyond all lingering doubt.  Though Cat supposed she had always known.  She'd only forced herself back into ignorance once or twice or three times, as necessity dictated. 

Kara was quite simply not entirely human, and her skin was a glaring example thereof.  She hardly had any scars of blemishes--her skin was so smooth, so unyielding that it was positively unnatural.  Clothing, once removed, barely even left indentations upon it.

She had one scar, on her knee.  An accident on Krypton, she'd confessed one night, barely above a whisper, a secret she'd intended to keep forever.  She had another birthmark, too, another patch of darkened skin high on her inner thigh that looked eerily similar to the one on her wrist.

At present, Cat contemplated the birthmark on her own wrist, held it up to the flickering light from the storm.  She had plenty of scars and blemishes, most she couldn't even trace.  One day they'd simply been there, some as long as she could remember, and she couldn't always place what she'd done.

Putting her assistant and her superhero together had not been as jarring as it should have been.  In fact, as with the first time Cat had realized that they were the same, it made much more sense than the feverish attempts at denial.  Of course Kara was Supergirl.  Cat could see it clearly, with hair sprawled across her pillow the way it blew in the wind, and bright eyes unobscured by unnecessary glasses, and strange body, human-esque but not quite, outlined in flashes of lightning.

Cat turned onto her side and trailed fingertips over its edges--shoulders, breasts, ribcage, stomach, hips, and back up again.  Kara stirred, but did not wake.  Cat's attention fell to Kara's wrist, arm splayed above her head, and Cat took it between her hands and studied the mark, a simple patch on skin that was not quite human, that was so clearly and exactly the same as the one on her own skin.

Sentimental nonsense, she thought, but there was no fire in the accusation.

Something horrible had happened.  The story was being plastered all ove rthe city, and it made Cat ill to see it.  She'd never have allowed something so vile to be framed in such a way.  A violent man had killed his girlfriend as a quarrell and people wanted to paint them as soulmates.  Herein, Cat had ranted in Kara's general direction, lay the danger of that Soulmate Rule bullshit.  Putting harmful ideas into young people's heads, making them think that violence equated to love, that a tragic death was some sort of romantic sacrifice.

Kara had sat quietly, curled up in her chair, nursing a hot cocoa and thumbing the mark on her own wrist.  I _guess I always thought about it the other way_ , she confessed, low and stormy.  _It's terrifying to think--to know--your love could be destructive._

And then Cat had known, and she'd been so caught up in her rage that she was infinitely frustrated, and it rendered her reckless.  _Oh, don't be silly_ , she'd said, and pulled at Kara's hand until her wrist lay beside Cat's.  _You've managed not to kill me so far_ , she'd said, but when their skin was touching and Kara's eyes were wide and burning, the airy quality of Cat's voice rang thin.

 _Of all the things I managed not to do_ , Kara said, with a kind of ferocity Cat had not expected, _I think I'm most glad of that._


End file.
